Austrian Roma Jesuit honoured in Italy

The Jesuit Georg Sporschill, who is known far beyond Austria's borders for his commitment to street children and Roma in Romania, will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Udine on 16 September. At a ceremony held by the Italian university, which has 17,000 students and is medium-sized in size, Rector Prof. Alberto Felice De Toni handed over the honorary decree for primary school education (Scienze delle Formazione Primaria) at 6 p.m. in the university "Centro di Accoglienza E. Balducci".

The decree of the Italian Minister of Science, Marco Bussetti, states that the honorary doctorate is awarded to Sporschill for his educational work in Romania, which saves disadvantaged people. Sporschill's pioneering work was aimed at "developing forms of education and qualitative support for children and young people with very specific needs in extremely complex contexts".

Franco Fabbro, professor of psychology at Udine University, who was a supporter of the Sporschill Prize, stresses: "His thinking and his works put Georg Sporschill on the side of a few Italian priests who, in the last century, dealt with abandoned and needy young people, which considerably increased the progress of educational science".

"We go where the need is greatest."

Georg Sporschill, born 1946 in Vorarlberg, studied theology, education and psychology in Innsbruck and Paris. He then worked as a consultant in adult education in the Vorarlberg state government. At the age of 30 he entered the Jesuit Order and two years later was ordained priest.

As a young chaplain in Vienna-Lainz he founded and accompanied many youth groups. From 1980 onwards, Sporschill's commitment applied to young people who had been released from prison, drug addicts and homeless. He founded the Caritas Youth Centre and three other shelters for the homeless. He sent the "Canisibus" with soup to the homeless and opened the "Inigo" restaurant in downtown Vienna, which gives long-term unemployed people work and self-confidence.

Georg Sporschill went to the street children of Bucharest in 1991. Together with Ruth Zenkert he founded the relief organisation "Concordia Sozialprojekte" and took thousands of children from the streets and canals of the Romanian capital to children's and youth homes. Since 2004 he has been working in the Republic of Moldova for orphans, neglected teenagers and needy elderly people. Four years later, Sporschill began his work for children and families in Bulgaria.

The principle "We go where the need is greatest" finally led him to the Roma in Transylvania/Romania, where he founded the association "Elijah" (www.elijah.ro) with Ruth Zenkert after leaving the "Concordia" board in 2012. In the region, tens of thousands of Roma families live on the outskirts of the villages, in the most confined of spaces, in poorly constructed mud huts, expelled from society. Illiteracy, unemployment and hopelessness prevail. The association "Elijah" has the aim to help the families with many children to get out of misery by their own efforts in order to break the cycle of poverty.

New centre in Hosman near Sibiu

Father Georg Sporschill wants to give the children and young people in particular new prospects for the future through social centres, homework supervision, music lessons and training workshops. He lives and works in Hosman, 30 kilometres west of Sibiu, in the Elijah community.